The Japanese Language
Brain
By Masaomi Ise

They Can't Hear the Insects?

Our story begins with the visit
of Professor Tadanobu Tsunoda of Tokyo Medical & Dental University to
Havana, Cuba, in January 1987 to attend the 1st international seminar titled
"Central Nervous System Disease Physiology and Compensation." Cuba
was still under embargo and Prof. Tsunoda was the only participant from a
western nation. There was a reception on the night before the seminar began,
with many scientists from eastern bloc nations in attendance. A Cuban man was
delivering a fervent speech in powerful Spanish.

But Prof. Tsunoda was distracted
by the extremely loud sound of insects that enveloped the meeting hall.
Realizing that even in January Cuba was hot, Prof. Tsunoda asked someone
around him what kind of insect it might be, but no one could hear the insects
but him, while to Prof. Tsunoda it sounded like a loud outburst of cicadas or
crickets!

When the reception finally ended
at about 2 o'clock in the morning, Prof. Tsunoda made his way back with two
young Cubans. On the quiet night streets, he could hear the same insect songs
as before, but even louder now. Prof. Tsunoda pointed out many times the
places in the bushes where he could hear the insects singing, but though the
two would stop and stand still to listen intently, they couldn't hear
anything. They just looked at him rather strangely, and said he must be tired
so have a good night.

Prof. Tsunoda met with the two
Cubans every day for some activity or another, but not until the third day did
the man finally notice the insects' noise. He didn't seem much interested,
however. The woman never did hear the insects during the whole one week
seminar. To the doctor it seemed that the hearing of Japanese people and
hearing of foreigners had to be very different.

Left Brain, Right Brain

Based on this difference in the
sense of hearing, Prof. Tsunoda set out to research the physiological
difference between the brains of Japanese and of the other races. The results
of his research led to a surprising discovery. The human brain is divided
between the left and right spheres, with each having different functions. The
right brain is called the music sphere, because it is where the sounds of
music, machinery and noise is processed. The left brain is called the language
sphere, because it processes sound logically and intellectually, namely being
where the spoken word is comprehended. Up to this point Japanese are the same
as Westerners.

But Prof. Tsunoda found a
difference in the location where the sound of insects is processed. His
experiments revealed that while Westerners process insect sounds together with
machinery and noise sounds in the music sphere, Japanese capture insect sounds
in their language sphere, meaning that Japanese hear insect sounds as
"insect voices."

For the Cubans, if one were used
to hearing the loud insect singing that filled the meeting hall as the
ordinary background noise, they would not even be conscious of it. This is the
same phenomenon as living for many years next to a railroad and growing so
accustomed to the noise that we wouldn't even notice a train passing by. But
since Japanese hear insect sounds in the same language sphere as they hear
human voices, we can't let insect sounds just go by as part of the background
noise. The fervent speech in Spanish and the loud insect singing were in
direct competition in the left brain of Prof. Tsunoda.

This unique characteristic is
only found among Japanese and Polynesian people, while Chinese and Koreans
exhibit the same pattern as Westerners. What is even more interesting is the
fact that Japanese whose mother tongue is a foreign language follow the
Western pattern, while foreigners whose first language is Japanese follow the
Japanese pattern. So this phenomenon is not a matter of "hardware,"
or the physical structure of the brain, but an issue of software, namely what
language was learned first as a child.

Right or Left Brain Experiments

Before examining this difference
further, let's take a quick look at the experimentation that proved these
results. The actual nerves that run from the human ear to the brain cross
over, so that sound data from the right ear goes into the left brain, and vice
versa.

When different melodies are
played at the same time into the right and left ears, which melody does the
person hear? The person always recognizes the melody that he heard in his left
ear better. This is how we know that the right brain, namely the left ear, is
better at music.Similarly, if
different words are spoken simultaneously into the right and left ears, the
right ear, namely the left brain, has better recognition.That is way we almost always put the telephone receiver to our right
ear.There are other more
complicated ways to test this, but this is the most fundamental
experimentation method.

Using this method and many
different types of sounds to find the difference between the left and right
brains, it was shown that Japanese and Westerners alike heard music, machinery
and noise sounds in the right brain and language sounds in the left brain, but
Japanese heard vowels sounds, crying, laughing and sighing, the cries of
insects and animals, waves, wind, rain, running water and Japanese musical
instruments in the left brain, the same as language, while Westerners heard
these sounds in the right brain together with music and noise.

Insect Sounds in America?

Speaking of insect sounds, I had
the following experience. While driving through the mountains about two hours'
inland from Boston far from human habitation, I came upon a beautiful spot, so
I stopped the car to take a rest. I heard insects calling loudly even though
it was broad daylight.

While I was listening to their
sounds, I suddenly remembered that I never heard the sound of an insect while
I lived in California for four years. Even in desert-dry California there is
plenty of greenery along the coasts. But in my mind's eye, for some reason the
woods that I can picture there were always completely silent. I couldn't ever
remember hearing a noisy burst of crickets, or the insects that sing in the
long nights of autumn.

What first comes to mind for
Americans when they think of insects are mosquitoes, flies and bees, namely
pest insects. There are still bees in America, but you hardly ever see flies
or mosquitoes. That's why when you occasionally see a fly, you feel that you
must be in a very unsanitary place. Where did these "enemies of civilized
life" all disappear to?

Also, words that are used to
define insects also tend to have bad connotations. The word "insect"
when used about a person means "worm, good-for-nothing," while the
word "bug" means '"annoy," and is also used to mean a
software error, as in "programming bug."

If all insects are pests, and
all their songs are just heard as noise, then it wouldn't be strange to think
that Americans have used the same poisons they used to eradicate the fly and
mosquito to indiscriminately destroy all the other species.

The Culture to Be Heard in
Insect Sounds

In contrast, in Japan there is a
whole culture to be heard in the sounds of insects. Even today there are
websites devoted to images of crickets and recordings of their songs, and
there are countless books about how best to keep them. The nursery rhyme
"Insect Voices" is an example of how the art we hear in insect
sounds is familiar to us from childhood.

Oh,
the matsumushi cricket is singing
Chin-chiro, chin-chiro, chin-chiro-rin
Now the suzumushi bell-ring cricket is starting to sing

Rin rin rin rin ri-in rin
Calling out through the long autumn nights
Oh how beautiful are the insects' voices !

All the different kinds of
insects like matsumushi and suzumushi sing with different kinds
of chirps.

We can imagine the Japanese view
of nature that says both humans and insects as part of all living creatures
have "voices" and "feelings." The unique characteristic of
Japanese people that hears insect sound and human voices in the same language
sphere of the brain is very well reflected in our culture.

Dogs Say "Wan-wan,"
Cats Say "Nya-nya"

Prof. Tsunoda's discovery also
showed that besides insect sounds, Japanese also heard other animals' cries,
plus the sound of waves, wind, rain and bubbling brooks in the language
sphere. In Japanese, brooks say "sara-sara," waves say "zabu-n,"
rain says "shito-shito," and wind says "byu-byu-." Prof.
Tsunoda's discovery is in line with the ancient Japanese view of nature that
sees gods living in every natural being, from mountains to rivers and seas,
with man being no more or less than one of these natural beings.

The fact that this type of
onomatopoeia is so highly developed is a special characteristic of the
Japanese language. Maybe it is only natural for children who have been taught
these onomatopoeia words from the beginning to learn to process all nature's
sounds including insects and animals as language. Or, did these onomatopoeia
developed so richly precisely because we started out processing natural sounds
in the language sphere?

Either way, the physiological
characteristic of Japanese to hear natural sounds in the language sphere of
the brain, and the linguistic characteristics of the Japanese language which
has highly developed onomatopoeia, together with the Japanese view of nature
which finds gods residing in all natural beings, are all very well represented
within the Japanese psyche.

Not the Man but the Language

The significant part of Prof.
Tsunoda's discovery is that the Japanese pattern of hearing nature sounds in
the language sphere is not a matter of ancestry, but rather dependent on
whether Japanese was the first language learned.

Data collected from 10 South
Americans of Japanese ancestry shows an extreme example of this. Nine of these
10 ethnic Japanese had either Spanish or Portuguese as their first language,
and their brains all fell under the Western pattern. The only one who
exhibited the Japanese pattern was a girl who had received a thorough
education in Japanese language from her father and didn't understand a word of
Portuguese until she was 10 years old. She then entered a Brazilian grammar
school and stayed in Brazilian schools through university, but she was still
the only one who exhibited the perfect Japanese pattern of processing natural
sounds in the language sphere.

On the other hand, Koreas and
Chinese follow the Western pattern, but Koreans and Chinese who live in Japan
and learned Japanese as their mother tongue all follow the Japanese pattern.

This very likely means that the
Western pattern or the Japanese pattern have nothing to do with race but
rather with the difference in the mother tongue. We should not say
"Japanese brain" but "Japanese language brain." In Prof.
Tsunoda's studies so far, the only language he has found with the same pattern
as Japanese is Polynesian.

Difference Gives Rise to
Creativity

But what significance does this
difference in brain function thus attributed to the Japanese language have for
us?Dr. Hideki Yukawa, a scholar
of theoretical physics, had this to say in a conversation with Prof. Tsunoda.

"In
other words, Japanese have often been said to be somewhat emotional. In
contrast to (Westerners who are) rational, that Japanese were said to be more
emotional may well have been structural, functional or cultural, but the fact
that there actually was a difference that applied in that instance has been
made clear by Professor Tsunoda's research.

In
that case, my thinking is that our direction should be to take advantage of
that difference. Instead of worrying whether the difference makes us better or
worse, we should put that difference to work for usc. From difference rises
creativity. The roots of inferiority toward the West run deep among the
Japanese people, but to see ourselves and our differences in that manner acts
only to further deepen that inferiority complex.h

gFrom difference rises
creativity" coming from Dr. Yukawa, who won the Nobel Prize for his
highly creative meson theory, these words have great weight. The difference in
the Japanese language brain is contributing to increased diversity of the
human race, and our culture, which turns its ears to hear each insect's voice,
can be seen as a creative response to human life that can enrich and enliven
all of human culture.h

The respectful outlook toward
nature that turns one's ears to the voices of all living beings is a valuable
hint as to how to live in harmony with all the living beings on our Spaceship
Earth.

It is our duty as Japanese
toward the rest of the world to make a conscious effort to study the Japanese
language brain that we have inherited in order to make better use of our
natural creativity.

This article is adapted from the
mail magazine gJapan on the Globe.h Masaomi Ise is editor-in-chief of the
magazine. URL: http://come.to/jog